by Karen Strong
“Stella, Ellis has been in the house all night,” Mama said.
Mrs. Taylor frowned and put her hand over her heart. “I saw him. He was walking around in the dead of night, so I thought you should know.”
“Why don’t you let me walk you back to your house?” Daddy took Mrs. Taylor by the arm. “Maybe I can take a look around in your backyard, too.”
“No, Daddy!” I blurted out.
“Don’t do that, Uncle Robert!” Janie chimed in.
“It’ll be fine, Sarah,” Daddy said. “I’ll be right back.”
“We can wait here for you,” I said.
Daddy turned to look at Mama. She held a hand to her mouth to stifle a yawn. “I’ll make the children some hot cocoa.”
“That’s a good idea, Mama,” Ellis said. “Can you fry me an egg, too?”
“No, you’ll be up for the rest of the night.”
“What about a sandwich, then?” My brother followed Mama into the kitchen.
Janie and I waited by the door. I didn’t want Daddy out in Mrs. Taylor’s backyard. What if the haints were still there? I rubbed my hands together in worry. After a few long minutes Daddy came back into the house.
“Did you see anything?” I asked.
Daddy shook his head. “I think Mrs. Taylor may have been half-asleep. The wind is blowing hard tonight. A strong gust probably triggered her motion light.”
We went into the kitchen, and Mama poured us each a mug of hot cocoa as she fought off another yawn. “Sarah, I’m going back to bed. I’ll let you look after these two.”
When Mama left, Janie took a small sip from her mug. “Should we tell Ellis?”
“Tell me what?” Ellis dunked a marshmallow into his cocoa.
“The boy from Creek Church was in our backyard,” I said. “There were some haints, too. With him in the woods.”
“He’s a haint,” Janie said. “Sarah saw his eyes change. He’s one of them.”
“What?!” Ellis shouted.
“Calm down,” Janie said.
“You can’t tell me to calm down right after you say haints were outside our house!”
“Daddy checked outside. They’re gone now,” I said.
Ellis shook his head. “If something happens to me, I swear I’m gonna haunt y’all forever.”
“Nobody is getting hurt,” I said. “Stop talking like that.”
I tried to keep my hands from shaking while we drank the rest of our hot cocoa in silence.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
A Spiritual Problem
The next day brought blinding sunshine, but it also carried a creepy revelation.
“I have something to show you. You ain’t gonna like it,” Ellis said, motioning for Janie and me to come out to the porch.
The sun had topped over the trees and bathed the front of our house in a warm glow. I shielded my eyes from the brightness.
Ellis pointed to the far corner of the porch. Next to Mama’s pot of marigolds my brother’s latest model car lay on top of faded newspaper covered in dried mud. The tires were mashed in and crooked, the hood pushed in as if it had been punched by an angry fist. My stomach bubbled with dread. Janie bent down to inspect it.
“Don’t touch it!” Ellis said. “Might be booby-trapped.”
“You found it like this?” I asked.
He nodded. “I left it out here to let the paint dry like I always do. Somebody took it on a joyride and messed it all up.”
Janie moved forward and examined the car more closely. “Look at this, Sarah.”
I squatted down beside her and saw a small muddy handprint. Fingertips pressed flat against the faded newspaper. It was slightly smaller than my hand, like it belonged to a younger kid.
“Ellis come here,” I said.
My brother took two steps backward. “Nope. Not interested.”
Janie stood up. “I bet it was the boy.”
“A haint had my car?” Ellis shook his head.
“It doesn’t make any sense. Why would he damage it?” I said. “We should have broken the curse. We put the cameo back.”
I rambled down the porch steps and went into the backyard. Ellis and Janie followed.
Mama’s tall iris plants were in full bloom and framed a small garden of tomatoes, pole beans, and hot peppers. The ground was muddy from the heavy rains, but there was no doubt someone or something had been here last night. There were footprints everywhere.
I stared up at my bedroom window where I had last seen the strange boy. The boy whose eyes flickered silver in the dark.
Traveling down from the roof, muddy handprints stood stark against the white wood of our house. Bigger than the one we saw on the faded newspaper on the porch. Most of them were underneath my window, overlapping in a chaotic pattern. I couldn’t tell if they belonged to one person or thing. My throat felt funny, as if I had swallowed a cold rock.
“Were they trying to get inside?” Ellis asked.
The boy had been trying to get my attention, but why? Was he trying to warn me? What if haints did get inside the house? Would they hurt us? Hurt Mama or Daddy? The thought of haints stalking the hallways had me full-on terrified.
A garden hose could wash this evidence away, but this was a bigger problem. We had awakened something. Something that couldn’t be ignored.
“This isn’t good,” I said.
“We should call Jasper,” Janie said. “Maybe he knows what this means.”
“Jasper can’t help us now,” I said. “We need to talk with Mrs. Whitney.”
We had to figure out how to stop the spirit world from messing with us.
• • •
After telling Mrs. Taylor we were taking a walk down to Town Square, we headed out of my neighborhood to Main Street. Ellis slurped from a cup of fruit cocktail, and Janie complained about the heat and lack of shade. I thought the sun was bright and pleasant, a good break from the heavy rains.
I still tried to think of a reason for the muddy handprints underneath my window, but, unlike when we found the message, I didn’t try to justify what had happened with a scientific explanation. The boy was one of the restless spirits. A haint with unfinished business.
When we arrived at the Train Depot, both the gift shop and history center doors were locked, CLOSED signs hanging in the windows. Walking around to the loading dock, we found Jasper surrounded by a heap of new deliveries for the gift shop. He wrestled with the boxes that were probably filled with charms, scary dolls, and more silver hands—things Mrs. Whitney had brought to Warrenville to help. I wondered if anyone else in town had muddy handprints left around their house. Do the haints make multiple visits? Would they return to our house? What did they want from us? I had so many questions to ask Mrs. Whitney. She needed to know what we had sparked.
“Is Mrs. Whitney around?” I asked. “We need to talk to her.”
Jasper took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “She’s kind of busy right now. She’s with a client.”
“Do you know when she’ll be available? We need to make an appointment as soon as possible,” I said.
“We have a spiritual problem,” Janie added.
“You think?” Ellis finished his fruit cocktail with a long, noisy slurp and threw it in the trash. “Check this out, Jasper. Haints tried to get inside the house. They wrecked my car.”
Jasper’s mouth dropped open. “What? Start from the beginning.”
We started with last night’s visit and what we saw in the backyard, the muddy handprints under my bedroom window, the boy with silver eyes. Jasper’s eyes grew wide and scared.
“You definitely need an emergency appointment,” he said. “But I can’t disturb her when she’s with a client. You’ll have to come back.”
“We can’t just go inside and wait?” Janie asked.
“Sorry, Mrs. Whitney doesn’t like anybody in her shop when she has appointments.”
Janie pouted and fanned herself, pulling her halter top a
way from her skin. “What do we do now? Stay out here and melt?”
“We can walk over to the library and wait,” I said. “Maybe I can find some books that will help us.”
“Come back in an hour,” Jasper said.
• • •
The Warrenville public library was next door to the post office in Town Square. It was actually a small ranch house with a wraparound porch. Ms. Bell, the librarian, had once told me that good things come in small packages. The library was only open three days a week, when Ms. Bell came up from Alton. Most of the time she brought all the interlibrary loans I had requested. There weren’t many shelves for books, but we had all the current newspapers and magazines. Even one ancient computer.
When we entered the library, Ms. Bell was in her usual spot at the front desk. A stack of books hid her tiny body, but I could see her blond hair piled high on top of her head. She had several pencils sticking out of her bun.
“Good morning, Sarah!” Ms. Bell chimed as she peeked around the stack of books. “You need help finding anything today?”
“We’re good, Ms. Bell,” I said. We didn’t need to spook her out too.
“Come find me if you do.” She went into the back office.
There was a low probability that there were books in here that could help us, but I knew it wouldn’t hurt to look. Knowledge was power. Even for a spiritual problem, there had to be a solution. And even if Mrs. Whitney was the only person who had the expertise, I still wanted to look for myself.
“Okay, let’s see if we can find anything,” I said.
“Y’all can look. I’m gonna read some comic books.” Ellis left us and went to the stack of new issues on the display counter.
Janie also wandered away from me to the periodicals area. She picked up a thick volume of a glossy fashion magazine and promptly sat down on the floor and started to turn the pages.
I sighed. No one wanted to browse the books. Surprise, surprise.
Walking through the aisles, I looked through my regular stash of science books. Most of them I had already read. Ms. Bell and Mama agreed that I could check out books from the adult side too, so I could read more advanced subjects. It was where I had learned about dark matter, the theory of relativity, and my beloved solar system. A lot of the chapters went over my head, but Mama always said it was good to challenge your mind, and in time things would start to make sense.
Turning down the next aisle, I bent down to a shelf I never gave a second glance to, but now I had a different focus. My fingers dragged over a small section of books, all of them covered with a film of dust. I stared at the labels. Parapsychology. Occultism. Ghosts.
I took each book off the shelf and scanned the pages, but they pertained to otherworldly experiences. Nothing about protection.
Disappointed, I put the books back. I was about to join Janie at the periodicals area when another book caught my eye. Small and thin. The gold lettering on the spine glowed in the dim light. The Witch’s Moons.
I opened the book and looked at several illustrations of different witches worshiping the moon in different seasons.
A woman with flowing blue hair and dark skin stood in a fur-lined cloak in a field of snow. Her eyes were closed, her chin tilted to the full moon.
I read aloud the words on the page. “ ‘The Ice Moon is the time for new promises.’ ”
On the following page, a pale woman dressed in gold held glowing orbs of lightning in each of her hands as she praised the Thunder Moon. I thought of all the summer storms we’d had in the last week. The bright lightning that lit up my bedroom and the crackling thunder that rumbled in my chest.
I read the snippets for each moon. The Sugar Moon. The Flower Moon. The Harvest Moon. All of them coincided with the Julian calendar. These women weren’t witches. They had discovered the properties of the moon and its effects on nature just like any good scientist.
I turned to the final two pages of the book. On one side, a dark sky was littered with stars, reminding me of nights in Warrenville. A pale woman wore a dark cape, her hood pulled over her face. Only her arms were visible as they stretched toward the sky. She held an empty glass bowl in her hands.
“ ‘The Dark Moon opens the doorway to different beliefs and an opportunity to change destiny. A doorway to new beginnings,’ ” I whispered.
The other side of the page was different. A full moon hung low in the sky, surrounded by clouds. A dark woman was in a red silk gown, her face hidden beneath long dark curls. She held a gilded harp in her arms like a shield.
The Full Moon must be treated with care, said the caption below her. All caution should be taken during the Witching Hour, when the veil between the natural world and the spirit world disappears.
It was then that I looked at the picture more closely. On first glance, stars littered the clouds that surrounded the moon. But after staring for another moment, I realized they weren’t stars at all. They were eyes. Glowing haint eyes.
I was so fixated on the image that I didn’t hear Janie call my name, and when she touched my arm, I yelped.
“What’s wrong with you?” Janie frowned.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.” I put the book back on the shelf.
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
“Nothing that can tell us how to keep those haints from coming back to the house.”
“It’s been almost an hour. We should see if Mrs. Whitney can talk now.”
I stood up and wiggled the cramps out of my legs. I was still thinking about the women. The Dark Moon. The Full Moon. The Witching Hour. Still no answers. If anything, I only had more questions.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Amulets
Mrs. Whitney was standing in front of the display of the silver hands when we walked into the Train Depot. “You have a spiritual problem?” She didn’t turn around to face us.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. Jasper must have told Mrs. Whitney that we needed an appointment. “We had some haints come to our house. We need to know what we can do to keep them from coming back.”
Mrs. Whitney turned around. She was wearing another long white dress, and her hair tumbled around her shoulders. She wore the same collection of necklaces, and I stared at the large dark stone.
“Come with me.” She passed the silver hands display and turned down a short hallway to a room. We followed her inside.
It was a small, dank space lit by candles. A storage room with shelves of mason jars filled with spices and herbs overwhelmed my senses. Other jars were filled with things I didn’t recognize, but I could have sworn I saw some chicken feet and snakeskins. I nervously rubbed my arms.
Everyone thought Mrs. Whitney was a witch, but I didn’t see any pentagrams. No magic wands. Only a bowl of water and a stack of stones on a small card table. She motioned for us to sit in two metal folding chairs. The next few moments were filled with awkward silence before she sat down in front of us and stared.
Finally, I cleared my throat. “Do you think you can help us with our spiritual problem?”
“There has been a disturbance,” Mrs. Whitney said as she lit three red candles. “I’ve had several appointments this week. Something has awakened the spirits in Warrenville. Do you girls know anything about this?”
I stole a glance at Janie. She was sitting straight in her chair, her mouth in a tight line. She wasn’t going to confess anything.
“Is this about Creek Church?” I asked.
“Creek Church is just one place. The spirits have awakened all over town. I’ve had to deal with all kinds of mess. I wasn’t quite ready yet, but it is what it is.”
I swallowed hard. I thought Creek Church was the only haunted place. Hearing haints were coming out of the woodwork didn’t comfort me at all.
“Do you know what did it? What woke them up?” Janie asked.
“No, but I have my theories,” Mrs. Whitney said as she opened a jar of large seeds and placed them one by one in the water.
Mrs. Whitney didn’t answer; she opened another mason jar filled with a pungent yellow powder. “The spirits were just outside the house? They didn’t enter?” Mrs. Whitney poured the powder into the bowl.
“No, but they left handprints underneath my window,” I said. “We think they were trying to find a way inside.”
“That’s good,” Mrs. Whitney said. “Means they can’t enter. Not yet.”
Janie and I exchanged another look. I was glad that Ellis had decided to stay outside. He wouldn’t like any of this. He’d probably have nightmares for months.
Mrs. Whitney opened another mason jar full of dried green leaves and crushed them in her hands before sprinkling them over the water. She took a wooden spoon and mixed everything together, then slowly started to hum a somber melody. I wondered if she was casting a spell. Janie gave Mrs. Whitney a rotten-egg stare.
“Are you making a potion?” I asked.
Mrs. Whitney ignored me and continued humming. On the table, she opened a straw basket and grabbed several strips of linen cloth. She poured the contents of the bowl through a filter and then placed a small amount of her concoction onto each strip, making little pouches with twine.
“I’m making amulets for your family,” she said. “You should wear them on your person at all times.”
“What’s an amulet?” I asked.
“Protection,” she replied.
I stared at the pouches on the table. I wouldn’t be able to give Mama or Daddy a haint-protection pouch. I already knew that. There would be no way to explain why they needed them without getting into serious trouble.
“So you’re gonna give us these pouches. That’s it? How do we even know it works?” Janie crossed her arms, unimpressed.
“You can use whatever you like, child. Its power is in your belief.” She touched the black stone necklace. I wondered if that was her amulet.
“What can we do to protect our house?” I asked.
“You can enforce a perimeter with iron or with blessed salt,” Mrs. Whitney said.
“How does that do anything?” Janie asked.